Wednesday, 19 March 2014

I've recently appeared in "The Eldritch Force" A Cthulhu Mythos Round Robin with Peter Rawlik, Glynn Owen Barrass, Brian M. Sammons, Bruce L. Priddy, Robert M. Price, Rick Lai and myself. This one features superheros in a Post World War Two setting.

This is my second publication with Lovecraft eZine, and I'm proud to have teamed up with such a talented bunch of authors.

I’ve recently been involved in a Indiegogo sponsorship campaign for a new anthology I’m appearing in:

World War Cthulhu

A Collection of Lovecraftian War Stories to the forefront with 19 war stories rooted deep in the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft. Wars and battlefields written by top names in the industry like John Shirley, Tim Curran, W.H. Pugmire, William Meikle, Cody Goodfellow, Jeffrey Thomas, David Kernot, Konstantine Paradias, C.J. Henderson, Peter Rawlik and many more featuring original illustrations by artist M. Wayne Miller, front cover artwork by award-winning artist Vincent Chong and edited by Brian M. Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass.

“The Bullet and the Flesh” by David Conyers and David Kernot

My contribution is modern day tale of horrors perpetrated by man against man. The use of child soldiers in Zimbabwe are not the worst things to be encountered as lives are given less worth than shiny baubles from the earth. Evil men mess with things unpredictable, and brave men such as Major Harrison Peel (from Cthulhu Unbound 3) are forced to fight for justice and balance.
Here is my promo video, to learn more:

Sunday, 9 March 2014

Extreme Planets is now out, and available from Amazon. Gardner Dozois says of the book in Locus, "The anthology does contain a lot of solid, entertaining, core SF"

Here is an extract from David Kernot and my contribution to the anthology, "Petrochemical Skies" set on a carbon planet.

Petrochemical Skies

David Conyers and David Kernot

Jenna Seno rechecked her astrogation calculations for the fifteenth time. The numbers came out the same and still she didn’t like them. She rolled her shoulders to relieve the tension in her back. It would be a long shift.

Despite her lack of practical experience, Jenna knew the info-courier, Banshee Stalker, could make the next hyperspacial jump but only if she used the gravitation field from the Iyangura class star system properly. From twelve light-years out, slingshotting them thirty-two light-years across the void to Hadrian Secondus was a risky move and a stark contrast to the slow three light-year-per-day pace through ‘safer’ space routes.

“Well, Seno?” Crandon ‘Towers’ Kerman, the Banshee’s captain, cracked his knuckles like he didn't have a care.

Jenna swallowed to free her tight throat. She didn’t know what he wanted her to say.

“Are you ready? Or do I need to baby-step you through your calculations again?”

Like her, Towers was strapped into an acceleration couch on the ship’s bridge, ready for any unexpected forces the jump might generate when they transitioned space-time points. He didn't seem bothered by the risky slingshot trajectory.

He wasn't being fair, but she pushed her inexperience aside. “Captain, if I make a mistake we’ll end up in the heart of the system’s star.”

He sneered. “Would you rather we took the long route, through deep space?”

“No, captain.”

“Want to lose six days and an expensive amount of energy generating our own slingshots? Our competitors will beat us to our client.”

Jenna closed her eyes. She wanted to scream. She hated that he was having fun with her.

One nagging thought compelled her not to agree with Towers; they could all die. She gathered courage and voiced her concern, “Captain, it _is_ safer to open a wormhole in a near absolute vacuum, deep into the void.”

He laughed. “Even near stars, Seno, there’s a vacuum.”

“I guess… I suppose——”

“Make the jump.”

She couldn’t be sure of her calculations, not yet, she only needed another minute. “What if we collided with any planets in Iyangura 281A?" A collision would be fatal. She wanted to mention the radial velocities if they came out of hyperspace too close to a planet.

“The Stalker’s hyperdrive automatically compensates for that.”

“But——”

“I said jump!”

Without waiting, Towers punched his authority codes into the bridge’s console, transferred her coordinates to the ship’s semi-AI via his biometrics.

Towers! Damn him! The man was a reckless fool.

They lurched.

Invisible forces pinned Jenna into her acceleration couch.

Anti-matter engines burned a point into the vacuum the size of an atom, until a massive gravitation singularity expanded from space-time and formed a wormhole. The _Banshee Stalker_ slipped into it and shifted: everything moved, like a bug swimming in a jug of water poured into a bigger jug, and then into an even bigger jug…

They fell, and Jenna tensed every muscle, closed her eyes from the vertigo. They accelerated away under high-g maneuvers toward who knew where. A vacuum hopefully but close enough to Iyangura 281A to appease Towers.

The wormhole opened on the opposite mouth and pulled the _Stalker_ through before it collapsed.

The other side greeted with a noise like hail on a roof. Ship sensors highlighted the hull bombardment exceeded ten thousands rock pellets. Their craft decelerated rapidly, and Jenna opened her eyes. On the bridge, virtual skin schematics lit the outside scene. They weren’t in a vacuum but conversely they didn’t fall into the million-degree heart of a sun. Visuals displayed a planet.

Debris shot skyward, a mix of giant boulders and fine dust flung outwards. Smaller rocks peppered them like machinegun fire. The visual displays showed the wormhole opening had pulverized a mountain-sized mass on the surface.

The Stalker spiraled downwards into the kilometer-wide crater, which sparkled like a diamond. Jenna closed her eyes again and contained another scream, hoped their disintegration would be instantaneous and painless.

About David

David Conyers is an Australian science fiction author residing in Adelaide. His fiction has appeared in Jupiter, Book of Dark Wisdom, Midnight Echo, Antipodean SF, and Andromeda Spaceways as well as a dozen anthologies published world wide including ‘best of’ collections.
He is the co-author of the novel The Spiraling Worm with John Sunseri and editor of the horror anthology Cthulhu’s Dark Cults, both published in the United States. David has been a multiple nominee for the Aurealis, Australian Shadows and Ditmar Awards. He won the Australian Horror Writers Association’s Flash Fiction Award in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Aeon Award in the same year.
He recently joined Albedo One, Ireland’s magazine of speculative fiction, as a regular reviewer and is currently editing Cthulhu Unbound 3 with Brian M. Sammons for Permuted Press.